musings

Poem: First Draft

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

Blogger’s Note: This fell out of my head pretty much like it’s written here. Not sure where it came from. No title yet; feedback welcome!

it is said
that a samurai should act with such purpose
such devout persistence
such selfless sacrifice and
oneness of thought and deed

that even if
he should be pierced by a thousand arrows
torn by bullet, blade, or spear
beheaded or run through
he should yet accomplish one last thing

it seems to me
the warrior and the lover are alike in this way
such devout persistence
such selfless sacrifice
when properly smitten

dying for another, each cry a song of glory

j. thorp
09 may 13

From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments
Finished reading a book of Roethke poetry over lunch, and ran across a few lines from his notebooks that spoke to me:

“Dear God, I want it all: the depths and the heights.”

“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.”

“Live in perpetual great astonishment”

“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries”

“Surround yourself with rising waters: the flood will teach you to swim.”

This is the book: Theodore Roethke: Selected Poems. I’ve always loved his early stuff, and the later material was wonderful, too. The stuff in the middle was a bit beyond me, but I read it and was rewarded nonetheless.

Impulse Buy

/ J. Thorp / 7 Comments

I’ve been buying a lot of books lately. Mostly used on eBay — great deals on good Catholic books. Got a nice former-library Encyclopedia of the Saints, which the whole family digs (10,000 saints — who knew?) for $2 or so.

Also picked up St. Thomas Aquinas’s simplified Summa Theologica, called My Way of Life, the source of that spectacular quote under This Moment on this blog, along with hardcover copies of Imitation of Christ and Imitation of Mary for something like $7 total, including shipping. Nice.

But what I really wanted was a nice pocket-size copy of Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales (pictured), patron saint of writers and journalists, and my confirmation saint. (Lest you think I knew at an early age what I would become, I should note that I was confirmed as a 25-year-old father of two; when I was a teen I didn’t know I would be a writer or a Catholic!)

There were lots of new paperbacks on eBay, and two hardcover editions from the 1920s. The first was a 1923 second edition in the saint’s native French, bound in brown leather. Beautiful book, but I don’t speak or read French, so it made sense that I’d bid on the late 1920s American edition, the size of a coat’s inside pocket, with the yellowed dust jacket still intact. There was another bidder, but surely it was destined to grace my shelf.

I bought the English edition, but couldn’t keep from watching as no one bid on the French version. Minimum opening bid was $5, plus $3 shipping. No reserve. No bids.

A horrible thought struck me: this book would be regarded as worthless and tossed. It would be burned, or rot amongst coffee grounds and banana peels. I had to save it.

I bid $5. Spent $3 on shipping. The book is beautiful, bizarrely bound (to my eyes, at least): a metal strip runs behind the leather spine, with two wire spring clips the hold the pages in. The pages themselves are not uniformly sized and are variously stitched together.

I was fascinated and promptly showed the family. Jodi smiled and shook her head. The kids were vaguely interested in the book — what caught their collective attention was Brendan’s question to me, in a tone equal parts hopeful and impressed, doubtful and incredulous: “Dad, can you read French?”

Um, no. I simply can’t help myself.

All-Nighters

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

I saw a sock on the sidewalk the other day — ankle-length, white with a pink toe and heel. Lost, perhaps, during a return trip from the laundry mat, though that wasn’t the first thought I had on the subject. My first thought was of my days working at Ferris State University and an autumn morning in 2002, full of awkwardness and regret (none of it mine, thankfully). This is how the morning unfolds in my mind now.

I drove to campus one morning in October. The autumn colors had just popped, and I had a poem brewing in my mind (“cornucopia,” posted here).

As I approached campus, I saw a young woman walking along a street of older houses, college rentals, mostly. She walked barefoot on the cold concrete, in boxers and an oversized sweatshirt, her blonde-on-brown highlights pulled back to a hasty ponytail. She carried her jeans and assorted other articles of clothing. She shuffled quickly through the tumbling leaves.

I drove past and parked my car. The poem was about half formed, and I needed a walk to solidify it. The girl from the sidewalk was gone, so I headed up that particular street.

Half a block up, a young man now sat on the front steps one of the rentals. He wore last night’s jeans and a white t-shirt, a backwards ball cap. I think he was barefoot, too, and I recall a beer can and a bottle of water on the step. His head was in his hands, and as I approached, he mumbled: “Not doing THAT again.”

“Rough night?” I asked, and he raised his head and blinked. “Dude, you have no idea.”

“You alright?”

“Think so.”

I walked on, wondering if these two bedheads were connected. I turned left at the end of the block, and worked a couple lines of the poem in my head. Not great, but alright. I took another left — and heard music drifting on the breezes.

Ahead and across the street, an upstairs window was open, and from it blared the voice of Alanis Morrisette, accompanied by an as-yet undiscovered co-ed: “It’s not fair to deny me/Of the cross I bear that you gave to me/You, you, you oughta know!”

Was it the sound of running water? Steam drifting from the window? The volume of the music in the window? To this day, I have the distinct impression of a girl singing angrily in the shower. The rage and sorrow in her voice seemed authentic, and the thought occurred to me: perhaps all three know each other now. And I thought I should write this down.

I walked on. The wind kicked up, and hundreds of orange leaves, swirled about my head shoulders. The poem took final form, and until I saw that sock last week, the rest of the morning slipped me.

Murphy’s Law, or This Week’s Answer to "What Do You Do, Anyway?"

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

Long week this week. I made the mistake of taking last Monday off. It proved to be unwise during of Board of Regents week at the U — so much to write, and all of my usual sources are busier than I am.

Had a big budget presentation to create for 9 a.m. Friday morning. On Tuesday, we walked through the numbers in spreadsheet form. The spreadsheet was complex for those of us who aren’t “numbers” people. I spent Wednesday trying to come up with a non-spreadsheet way to illustrate the problem posed by a major cut to the University’s state base budget contribution, followed by “backfilling” with temporary federal stimulus money … namely that, if you spend that federal money as though it were base budget money, when the stimulus bill expires, you have a major hole to fill two years down the road. Temporary money is not a permanent solution.

I managed to remember how to “animate” a slide in PowerPoint. Took longer than expected, as always. I created a vaguely hole-shaped bar chart and filled it with base funding, then cut that funding so the hole was partially empty. Then I filled the hole back up with temporary money, which faded away after two years, leaving the hole partially empty two years down the road.

It looked alright, and was a metaphor folks could relate to. I showed our CFO, and he saw several problems with it, however, as a result of my overly simplistic understanding (repeat: not a numbers guy). On Thursday morning, he proposed an alternative way of showing the problem over time. I began to rebuild.

Again, it took longer than expected. He liked the result, but suggested a few tweaks. Unfortunately the tweaks messed with the animation, so even the tweaks took longer than expected. By Thursday afternoon, we were in good shape — except that my boss, who would deliver the presentation, hadn’t reviewed it yet. (I needed one more day to work—what happened to Monday again?) He took it home with him and said he would call with changes Thursday evening. Hard copies of the presentation for the Board and members of the public attending the meeting would have to wait until morning.

I rose at 5 a.m. Friday and headed for the office to make copies — I arrived at 6:20, extra early, in case of problems. Sure enough, I walked up to the front for of our building to see a note announcing network maintenance — periodic outages beginning at 6 a.m.

Uh-oh, I thought. I might not be able to connect to a printer …

Unlocked to office and fired up the computer. No access to printers. Crap. No place else open at this hour. What now?

I connected my computer directly to an old color inkjet we use for printing remarks on index cards, printed a handout that I could copy black-and-white for the public in attendance, then started slowly cranking out color copies for the board. After a few copies, the old printer ran out of color ink. I don’t use it to print color — so it turns out we don’t have color toner for it. I pulled out the tiny travel printer and hooked it up.

So slow. It’s 7:45 now.

The travel printer won’t print. My computer still is not registering a network connection. Hoping against hope, I shut down my computer and the printers and restart. Finally, the network is back. I start printing.

Printing animations in PowerPoint requires you to print each individual step in the animation as a separate slide — so the single animated slide is actually 7 or 8 when it prints, and some of the intermediate steps make no sense as standalone slides. As each printout comes off the printer, I sort through and remove the nonsense slides.

8:30. Two-thirds done.

At 8:50 the last one comes off the printer. I close the laptop, grab the paper, and run across campus to the meeting. I hook up my computer and test the presentation just as the Board chair sits down to start the meeting.

The session begins with several faculty recognitions. Halfway through, I notice that my computer has launched its screensaver. As the faculty members shake hands with the board, I slip forward and disable the screensaver. Nothing like having your computer idle and run the screensaver during a presentation to the Board.

Three days = one PowerPoint presentation. Two and a half hours = 55 copies. Oh, it took about 30 minutes of the Board meeting to present and discuss, and I pushed the button to advance the slides. The Regents liked it — found it very clear and easy to follow and asked that it to be posted to the Web site as a PDF. To do that, I had to unanimate the slide into its constituent parts.

Yeah. That’s what I do.